Florida Historical Quarterly Volume 48 Number 1 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 48. Article 10 Number 1 1969 Book Reviews Florida Historical Society [email protected] Part of the American Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida Historical Quarterly by an authorized editor of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Society, Florida Historical (1969) "Book Reviews," Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 48 : No. 1 , Article 10. Available at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol48/iss1/10 Society: Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS Massacre. By Frank Laumer. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1968. xx, 188 pp. Preface, acknowledgements, introduc- tion, illustrations, bibliography, index. $7.50.) Frank Laumer’s Massacre is the most history book this re- viewer has had the pleasure of reading. If history were taught and if history books were written in the style which Frank Lau- mer uses in this volume, many more Americans would be history majors. In six chapters, each depicting a day’s travel with the ill- fated march of Major Francis Langhorne Dade from Fort Brooke toward Fort King, the author misses not the slightest colorful detail. His similes are excellent, and the descriptions are so vivid that this reviewer plodded every step of the tortuous military road with Major Dade and his 108 men. The reader feels the same early morning chill and shivers together with the dew- drenched soldiers as they munch their thick, unevenly cut slices of slab bacon and handful of hard bread and gulp their steam- ing black coffee. Feet tire with the footsore soldiers as they trudge through the soft sands of the military trail under the scrutiny of the ever-present eyes of the Seminole scouts, unseen in the thick underbrush. Mr. Laumer has woven a beautiful fabric out of what was as important an incident in American history as the attack on the Alamo mission in Texas just two months later. His knack of pointing out and describing all the small but important details makes Massacre a book which everyone should read. The au- thor’s research did not stop with army and other government reports from the archives; he researched even the weather so that temperature, wind direction and velocity, and cloud cover are a part of the whole cloth. For example, “The breeze had held steady from the southeast during the night, blowing toward the fort across the mangrove swamps and moving the 24-starred flag in slow ripples from the top of its tall wooden pole . not a cloud in the sky.” Or, “By half-past four the sun had dropped [79] Published by STARS, 1969 1 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 48 [1969], No. 1, Art. 10 80 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY from sight across the Big Hillsborough and the huge oaks in and out of the bivouac stood in black relief against the soft pink of the western sky; from the east, night was rising darkly against the hard pale blue of the upper sky and a scant quarter- moon sat upon the trees.” Background to the massacre is woven in with the chrono- logical events, and the brief but concise introduction gives the reader a clear understanding of both Indian and government attitudes prior to the event which on Monday, December 28, 1835, touched off the Second Seminole War. The illustrations, maps, and present-day photographs add to Mr. Laumer’s superb descriptions. His account of the return of the three survivors, crawling, blood-soaked, without food, back over the winding trail to Fort Brooke is heartbreaking. This reviewer found him- self wishing that all would make it and shuddering as the lone Indian dashed up on horseback, rifle in hand, and shot and scalped poor Edwin DeCourcy in the bush where he lay hiding. Frank Laumer’s five years of research have not been wasted. His scholarly footnotes add abundant documentation, and he has prepared an extensive bibliography. In his final sentence Laumer says, “If those who have read their story can share a measure of the author’s satisfaction, the search has been well repaid.” It seems hardly necessary to predict that every reader will add to author Laumer’s satisfaction and to his laurels as they peruse this fascinating saga of Florida and American his- tory. ROLFE F. SCHELL Fort Myers Beach, Florida From Cotton to Quail: An Agricultural Chronicle of Leon County, Florida, 1860-1967. By Clifton Paisley. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1968. xi, 162 pp. Preface, ac- knowledgments, illustrations, tables, bibliography, index. $6.50.) At one extreme the recording of local history is under taken for the benefit of interested readers in a given place. At the other extreme the recording nevertheless carries far wider im- https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol48/iss1/10 2 Society: Book Reviews B OOK R EVIEWS 81 plications. Clifton Paisley’s scholarly book belongs somewhere in the middle, not because he fails to accept the challenge of draw- ing from the agricultural history of Leon County any general conclusions but because he cannot. From plantation empires to quail empires, rural Leon County has consisted largely of estates, feudal in size and administration. Leon County is special, and while Mr. Paisley, career journalist and editor of Florida State University’s news bureau, claims he is writing about farming’s Leon County decline as the decline of a Jeffersonian way of life, he seems to this reviewer to be discussing the continuance of a pre-Jeffersonian way of life, that of great land blocs which have managed to survive into the space age. He begins with a chronicle of King Cotton: the era of the Bradfords and the Eppeses, of tournaments and carriages. In Leon County the Old South was no myth but truth. His expo- sition is sober and without nostalgia. In the following sections we learn what happened after the dream collapsed. There is detailed discussion of fertilizers, farm animals, the problems of tenancy, the researches of agricultural scientists, and the eternal problem of labor: freedmen unprepared for freedom, the forty- one Swedish immigrants who, when finding they were expected to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for what remained of the plantation aristocracy, exclaimed: “Do you take us to be your Negro slaves?” and left. After Reconstruction, experiments in diversification were tried. Vegetable growing faltered at the turn of the century because of the lack of direct rail connections between Tallahassee and the North. Wine-making prospered briefly only to be eliminated when Tallahassee perversely voted dry. Swiss Rudolph Herold came, mechanized, and conquered until a too-heavy investment in cattle collapsed with beef prices. Fruit, milk, nuts, tung trees, pecans - of each venture there are still Leon County remnants to be seen. Suburban pecan groves recall the days when sanguine promoters hoped Tallahassee would become “the Nutopolis of the South.” And then came the Yankees: for example the Griscoms of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Hannas of Ohio who num- bered among themselves Mark Hanna, maker of President Will- iam McKinley. Even today “the lands of the Hannas, their friends and associates now form so extensive a block that one Published by STARS, 1969 3 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 48 [1969], No. 1, Art. 10 82 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY can hardly enter Leon County from the north without crossing it.” All have come to hunt the bobwhite quail, and Mr. Paisley deals straightforwardly with the birds abundance, subsequent decline, and later recovery. It is a fascinating episode in the history of conservation. Quail have spelled the doom of Leon County farming, which can only be done in the narrow belt between the hunting pre- serves and the sandy pinewoods of the southern part of the county. There are hobby-farmers and stubborn holdouts, but farm lands are hemmed in by spreading suburbs. Optimistic plans for peaches and nectarines, persist; a “quick money crop” may yet be possible, enthusiasts argue. But though Leon County has tried for a century to farm scientifically rather than merely to mine the land, it has fallen to forty-seventh county in agri- culture in Florida. There is more hard cash to be gotten in real estate developments where “The Living Is Rather Great.” Mr. Paisley, an Arkansan by birth, clearly loves his adopted Florida county. He writes of its mossy “cut” roads and its tiny lakes with names like Pickle, Huggle, Tom John, and Bull. If his prose is not gripping, it is because it is not intended to be. Moments of wry humor are frequent. From Cotton to Quail is a careful historical study, faultlessly documented and researched. Extensive notes and bibliography are provided. The book is for readers who want a thoroughly reliable study of some in- teresting north Florida history. Florida academic and public libraries will wish to purchase it as a valuable addition to the literature of Florida between Southern Dream and Southern Boom. GLORIA JAHODA Tallahassee, Florida The Railroad That Died at Sea: The Florida East Coast’s Key West Extension. By Pat Parks. (Brattleboro: Stephen Greene Press, 1968. iv, 44 pp. Foreword, illustrations. $3.50.) In this brief, but extremely delightful volume, Mrs. Parks tells the story of the Key West extension of the Florida East Coast Railway. The entire history of Henry M. Flagler’s “Folly” https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol48/iss1/10 4 Society: Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS 83 is encompassed in a short thirty-one years, beginning in 1904 when the decision was made to build the “railroad that went to sea,” to September 2, 1935, when the disastrous Labor Day hurricane destroyed miles of the roadbed and forced the closing of the extension.